We are proud to host this e-consultation and we hope that you can take few minutes of your busy schedule to share with us your own knowledge and resources relevant to African agriculture development.
We all know that we have been through various process of priority setting in each of our regions. We’ve identified our own priorities through various studies and consultations. This time, we want to consolidate such priorities and have a more action-oriented discussions. We would like to see highlighted major initiatives that have achieved impact and how we can scale them out and up across the region. During the last African Caucus meeting in December 2008, we talked about ‘collective action for change’. We would like to followup this discussion to more concrete recommendations on how we could each contribute to the changes within the ARD community but most of all be able to influence the shaping of the new CGIAR to be more inclusive and to develop stronger partnerships with other research partners.
FARA itself have identified five networking support functions as its major interventions i.e.
- Advocacy and resource mobilization
- Access to knowledge and technologies
- Policies and markets
- Capacity building
- Partnerships and strategic alliances
We believe that as an apex organization at regional level, we cannot intervene into research per se, rather we reinforce the networking among various stakeholders of the African agriculture community. This is the main argument for the 5 priority areas stated above. We recognize that each of us have our own roles and responsibilities that can contribute towards the African vision stated in CAADP.
I hope that this e-consultation can bring out the voices of non-traditional stakeholders. We want to have new ideas and promote agricultural innovations, not just coming from research but also from civil society organizations, especially the farmers.
I look forward to a dynamic exchange of ideas.
Monty Jones
First Executive Secretary, Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA)
-> Join the Sub-Saharan Africa e-consultation from 7-23 September at: http://dgroups.org/groups/fara-net/GCARD-Africa
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